Why did Joshua Reynolds believe painting should be connected with scholarship?

Joshua Reynolds believed that connecting painting with scholarship was essential to his ambition of elevating the status of the artistic profession in England.1

Having been well-read in classical antiquity from a young age, Reynolds maintained a lifelong interest in literature and intellectual pursuits. During his formative travels to Rome, he devoted himself to the study of ancient Greco-Roman sculpture and Italian masterpieces. He concluded that by integrating this scholarly approach—grounded in the study of the old masters and rigorous academic training—he could move British painting away from anecdotal, provincial styles toward the formal rhetoric of the continental Grand Style.1

This commitment to intellectual depth was central to his leadership as the first president of the Royal Academy of Arts, where his annual Discourses emphasized that grandeur in art could be achieved through such scholarly dedication and the study of classical principles.1